


songs that died centuries ago

by Jerevinan



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, M/M, Reincarnation, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 20:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11676471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jerevinan/pseuds/Jerevinan
Summary: Noctis and Ignis recognized each other when they met as children. No matter how many lifetimes they pass through, they always find one another.





	songs that died centuries ago

**Author's Note:**

> This was the first prompt I filled for ignoct week! I've been anxious to share it for about a month now. :')
> 
> I tried to keep this mostly compliant with canon.

They meet when they are three and six. Noctis shakes his hand out of his father’s, tears blurring his vision, and runs half the distance to Ignis. The two latch hands as they meet. They fall to their knees on the floor, both of them wracked with sobs.

Noctis isn’t sure why, but he remembers pieces of lifetimes like the quick flip through a photograph album. The emotions—fear, grief, love, hatred—overwhelm him. He’s too young to know where these thoughts come from, why they’re there. 

“I missed you,” he tells Ignis.

“I missed you, too.”

“Please don’t leave me again.”

“I promise.”

King Regis tries to explain that they’ve never met, but both of them know. They’ve known every time they’re reborn and meet again.

~*~

Noctis doodles something in a sketchbook, a place that hides in a corner of his memory and tries to disappear when he pursues it. His drawing comes out as clearly as the distant mental image.

Ignis glances at it and away from his book. “There was a tree there, by the porch,” he says. “The cats would use it to get on the roof.”

Noctis nods and tries to draw a kitten—a static handful of black, orange and white fur who used to leave dead mice in their shoes when she was older. He draws another, an orange tabby who liked to curl on Ignis’ chest while he slept and beg for scraps of food as he sat on his shoulders.

Ignis went by a different name back then. Noctis can’t remember what it was and asks.

“I don’t know,” says Ignis.

“What about before this?” Noctis squints at the drawing. It’s not very good. He is held back by his body—much like any child of five—but he doesn’t remember a lifetime where he ever could draw, some place from which he can tap into a hidden skill.

“No idea, Noct.”

Noctis draws what is supposed to be a wind chime, and he remembers another fragment. Ignis used to sing to him.

“Sing for me,” insists Noctis.

Ignis obliges, and his lovely voice fills the library until their teacher hushes them and tries to bring them back to their studies. 

Noctis misses the pieces of forgotten lifetimes. He’s five, but he feels older, like a person who has seen grief and known love and looked death in its skeletal face. No one would know what he has been through if they peer into his bright, childish eyes. 

No one but Ignis, who sings the lyrics to songs that died centuries ago.

~*~

Reports come in from Tenebrae. Annexation of the region has been completed; the territory is now under the subjugation of the Empire. The Fleuret children have been captured.

But where is Noctis? Ignis continues to ask his uncle and the Crownsguard to find out where he is. No one knows for the next few days, which isn’t much different from their answers when Noctis wouldn’t wake up after the Marilith attack.

No one can tell him anything for two weeks, and Ignis barely rests or studies. No one scolds him. All he can do is cry silently into the pages of his books and press on, and that’s more than anyone will ask of him.

“I think you need rest,” says his uncle when Ignis almost faints at the dining table.

Ignis sleeps more deeply than he has in weeks, but he wakes up screaming in the early hours of the morning. A dream preys on his fears, and in it Ignis holds Noctis’ cold hand as they cart his body back to Insomnia.

The door flies open and Ignis’ uncle stands there, concerned. 

“Nightmare,” Ignis mumbles and tries to settle back into bed.

Ignis tosses and turns for the remaining few hours he has to sleep.

When his uncle comes to fetch him, it is with good news. 

“Noctis has returned.”

Ignis slides out of bed, a mess of sweat and tears in rumpled pajamas, and hurries for the elevator. He meets Noctis in the parking garage and throws his arms around him, and the boys cling to one another as they sob.

For the next few months, both children refuse to be separated. They defy their guardians and sleep in the same bed, taking their meals and studying together. There are times Noctis insists on sneaking out of the Citadel, and Ignis chooses to follow rather than report it. 

King Regis voices his concerns to Ignis’ uncle that perhaps the two boys need time apart. He has no plans to separate them entirely, but he enrolls Noctis in a local elementary school, while Ignis is to continue his courses under the best tutors Insomnia has to offer.

Ignis endures, but he feels like he’s being punished for caring. No one will ever understand Noctis the way he does—not even the man who fathered the prince in this lifetime.

~*~

“I wasn’t always a prince.” His words are buried under the noise of electronic gunfire and video game jingles. Noctis is tired of the way his other classmates stare at him. Prompto used to as well, but now he’s confident and slaps him on the back and goes to the arcade with him.

“What’d you say, Noct?” Prompto aims a laser controller and clears the ice bombs blocking his path.

“Nothing,” says Noctis, blasting Yojimbo into an explosion of coins. He grins and slides another token into the machine. Around Prompto, he isn’t the prince of Lucis. He’s just an ordinary high schooler. No layers to peel back and discover other lives, no expectations for the current role he has been cast into—not with Prompto. He can forget the pain. Toss aside the memories. 

Make new ones. _Fun_ ones. 

~*~

The world goes dark for Ignis, but this time he’s still breathing. Painkillers can only dull his suffering from a scream to a whimper. They do nothing to help the trauma or his fears. He sits in a chair and waits for Noctis to wake up. They’ve been here before, one or the other, waiting for death or life, the ache of loneliness clawing through their hearts. 

But this time, Ignis cannot see him. He cannot even brave holding his hand, when Noctis might wake to his marred face and not recognize him even in this lifetime, when they’ve known each other since children.

He has never felt ugly before. He never needed to worry about being good enough for Noctis. Not until now. 

He hopes the promise he made with Noctis when they first met is mutual. Noctis must remain tethered to this life a little longer. They’re too young. There is too much left to be done.

If there is no world to be reborn into, these will be their last moments together. 

That _cannot_ happen.

Everyone is angry and distant, and Noctis sleeps through it, moaning through nightmares and unaware of the one that has swallowed their reality. Ignis clutches the base of his cane and grits his teeth and tries not to scream.

~*~

The sun rises. Ignis can only make out the barest hint of light as the dawn breaks the horizon. The people will rejoice, but _his_ light has gone out. There is a hollow feeling in his chest, and he spends tears he didn’t know he had left. All he can wait for is death, for the cycle to start over again. 

Then he might see him again.

~*~

They are both twenty-five, and there are fireworks over the city. If one of them hadn’t glanced up from his cell phone, they never would have noticed each other in the crowd. 

The lumps gather in their throats as they brush past others to meet halfway.

They recite several dozen names to each other, looking for the right one, but each is met with a shake of their heads and laughter. It becomes a game until finally they reveal their most recent monikers.

They rest their foreheads together and laugh through their tears.

“It’s good to see you again.”


End file.
